Jim Cotter — wearing somebody else’s jacket, playing on somebody else’s curling team — slid up and down the pebbled ice at Merlis Belsher Place on Wednesday.

He was glad to be there, Cotter said, after joining the world champions from Sweden at the $250,000 Humpty’s Champions Cup.

“I just try to come in and not muddle the waters too much, let those guys do what they do. They’re the best team in the world,” Cotter said after helping Niklas Edin — fresh off his fourth world title — beat Scotland’s Ross Paterson 5-4 in their opening game.

Cotter, who skipped Team B.C. at this year’s Tim Hortons Brier, is playing third for Edin in Saskatoon. Their regular third, Oskar Eriksson, is representing Sweden at this week’s world mixed doubles curling championship in Norway.

“Nik reached out and asked if I’d spare,” Cotter says. “Of course, I said yes. It was pretty easy. I might have asked if they had the wrong number at first, but to curl with those guys is a privilege.”

“Jim is one of the most natural talents out there,” Edin says of the versatile Cotter. “Having thrown last rocks, third rocks, sweeping … he’s a perfect player on any team, especially at that position. It feels really easy to make that transition.”

Cotter wore lead Christoffer Sundgren’s curling jacket on Wednesday. It’s not an easy proposition to come onto a veteran world-championship team that’s set in its ways, he said. He’s trying to make it as easy as possible for everybody.

“I just told the guys ‘do whatever you normally do; tell me what you want to hear or not hear,’ ” Cotter recalls. “I wanted to come in quietly and let them do their thing.

“I told them to go ahead and speak Swedish (on the ice); just let me know what we need to do at the end. But their English is really good, too. We’ve all played the game a long time, and if I don’t know what they’re saying, I have a pretty good idea of what we’re going to try and accomplish.”

Edin’s team is not the only one making adjustments because of world mixed doubles. It’s a common theme this week: Colton Lott is subbing at second for Brad Gushue’s Brett Gallant, John Morris is skipping in place of American John Shuster, Eve Muirhead is replacing Swedish skip Anna Hasselborg, and Lori Olson-Johns is playing second for Jocelyn Peterman on the Jennifer Jones squad.

Edin, too, tried to get to that world mixed doubles championship — it’s an Olympic sport now, which has raised its profile greatly. The team prepared in advance for the idea that somebody might not make it to Saskatoon.

With Cotter coming on board, they did more talking than they usually do, the type of verbal preparation that doesn’t always happen with a team that’s played together for a long time.

Cotter says he’s not normally the nervous type, but that he felt “a little bit jittery, which I hadn’t felt in a long time,” before hitting the ice Wednesday.

“We know everything automatically,” Edin said. “But with a new player, you’ve got to start from the beginning and go through everything from split times and draw weights to hit weights, favourite turns, favourite shots, how to call, how to communicate. A lot of details.

“We talked for a couple of hours this week, going into the first game, about the little details and being on the same page. Once we got on the ice and started playing, it was super easy — but I think that’s also because we did the preparation really well going into the first game.”

Action at the World Curling Tour’s finale continues Thursday with draws at 8:30 a.m., noon, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The three Saskatchewan-based teams play once each: Regina’s Matt Dunstone takes on Scotland’s Bruce Mouat at noon, while at 8 p.m. Saskatoon’s Kirk Muyres plays Toronto’s John Epping, and North Battleford’s Robyn Silvernagle meets the Hasselborg team currently skipped by Muirhead.